Polluted China

On June 5th 2006, China Daily published this article about the costs of pollution throughout China.

China's pollution problems cost the country more than $200 billion a year, a top official said Monday as he called for better legal protection for grassroots groups so they can help clean up the environment.

Damage to China's environment is costing the government roughly 10% of the country's gross domestic product, estimated Zhu Guangyao, deputy chief of the State Environmental Protection Agency. China's GDP for 2005 was $2.26 trillion.

Despite the efforts of half a million environmental officials in his agency and other organizations, China's environmental picture is worsening and "allows for no optimism," he said as he released a report that described China's environmental situation as "grave."

...
Zhu said that his agency is hopeful that non-government environmental groups could play "important roles in promoting or pushing governments to solve the environmental problems."

He said the importance of NGOs in China lags behind other countries, and that the environmental watchdog wants to play a more important role in developing "legislation to secure their interests and existence in China."

He also listed seven tasks as the major environmental protection work in the coming five years. The most important task is water pollution control, with focus on drinking water security. The second is to step up urban environmental protection, especially the pollutants control in cities.

He highlighted the reduction of sulfur dioxide discharge as the focal work in air pollution control, the third of the tasks.

Other tasks include rural environmental protection, with emphasis on soil pollution control, eco-system protection, enhancement of nuclear and other radioactive sources security and implementation of the state environmental protection projects.